Movies with religious theme

You, too, must have seen the epic movie The Ten Commandments not just once, not just twice or thrice but many, many times. If memory serves, it was the first movie shown in Manila in the early ‘60s with an intermission, drawing record crowds to the Galaxy Theater where it was shown for more than a year (perhaps the movie with the longest run in Manila’s history).

The movie has been shown again and again not just in theaters but also on television year in and year out, when the Lenten season comes around, and if you have seen it “many, many times” as I did, you can almost memorize scene after scene and continues to be amazed by the special effects (parting of the Red Sea, etc.) that equal, even surpass, the technical wonders in modern times. Digital imaging was perhaps not even a germ yet in the imagination of today’s special-effects magicians when that movie was filmed, immortalizing Charlton Heston who played Moses.

The pictures on this page are those of movies circa 1952 (contributed by this paper’s Remember When? columnist Danny Dolor): Kalbaryo ni Hesus, produced by Lebran productions with “a phenomenal all-star cast” led by Norma Blancaflor as Virgin Mary and Fernando Royo as Christ.  

The Greatest Story Ever Told chronicles, as everybody knows, the story of Christ which has been retold many times over in other movies and television, with Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ as the most disturbing and therefore the most controversial. As with The Ten Commandments, every time you watch any of the Christ movies feels like the first time, especially during the Lenten season.

Of course, there are other movies with religious themes such as Barabbas (1961), Ben Hur (1925/1959), The Bible (1966), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), the Joan of Arc movies, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Lorenzo Ruiz (The Saint, a Filipino, 1988), Pedro Calungsod: Batang Martir (2013), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Spartacus (1960), Quo Vadis (1951) and many more.

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